The publication of the e-version of Affirming Collaboration: Community and Humanist Activist Art in Québec and Elsewhere is an initiative of Devora Neumark and Louise Lachapelle aimed at promoting and distributing this collective work. This publication also presents the video compilation Documenting Collaboration that includes five 15-minute documentaries co-created by members of community art projects and members of a humanist activist art project.

You are free to share – copy, distribute and transmit – the electronic version of Affirming Collaboration (including the video compilation Documenting Collaboration) without altering, transforming or building upon this work and provided that you attribute the work as follows :

Without minimizing the risks and pitfalls related to the collaborative process, Affirming Collaboration proposes that co-creativity is a gesture of personal empowerment and civic intervention that contributes to a more responsible and equitable co-existence in Québec and elsewhere. Negotiating decision-making and the allocation of resources within a collective art project – in such a way that the different voices are heard – involves dealing imaginatively with power and relational dynamics. Potentially, this leads to personal transformation and subversive political agency.

In addition to the DVD compilation entitled Documenting Collaboration (inserted in the centre of this book), interviews, project descriptions and essays convey practical information and invite critical reflection about how collaborative art develops and sustains healthy communities, even in this time of rampant individualism and global systemic inequalities.